


Love Thy Neighbour

by ephemera (incognitajones)



Series: The Most Beautiful Man in the World [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Pre-Relationship, the most beautiful man in the world, who lives in my building and only ever sees me when I look disgusting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 07:38:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14159940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/ephemera
Summary: Jyn is a functioning adult and a reasonably attractive person—really. So why is it that every time she encounters her new neighbour (aka The Most Beautiful Man in the World), she looks like she just crawled out of a trash compactor?





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always enjoyed the Tolkien fandom's tradition of giving a gift to the community at large on your birthday (as hobbits do). So here's my present for all those in the Star Wars and Rogue One fandoms who've made them so enjoyable for me over the past few years. I hope I've done the same for you.

_For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?_  
Jane Austen

 

1.  
Jyn is staring blankly at the grid of glowing numbers, her gums throbbing in time with her pulse, when she hears someone call “Hold the elevator, please!”

She automatically reaches out to stab the hold button and a man rushes in, juggling a briefcase the size of a cinder block and an even larger rolling file box. “Thank you so much,” he pants, and his smile is so bright and infectious that she can’t help smiling back at him, even with a sore mouth.

He looks familiar—very familiar—and surely, no-one smiles that charmingly at a total stranger. Jyn racks her brain trying to think where she knows him from. It always takes her a while to draw the connection to people she knows when she sees them in a new context. Parent of one of her students, maybe? 

He’s still smiling at her and she realizes she’s staring. In her defense, he’s the most beautiful person she’s seen up close in a long, long time. Surely she’d remember if she’d sat across from this man at a parent-teacher conference. A very lickable dimple dents his cheek just above the dark shadow of his beard, and his amber eyes are warm even in the ghastly fluorescent lighting.

“I don’t mean to be forward, but do I know you from somewhere?” He rests the heavy briefcase on top of the file box and tips his head curiously to one side. “It’s just, you look really familiar.”

And then Jyn recognizes him: it’s her new neighbour, the hot one who looks like he’s just stepped out of a magazine spread every time she’s seen him so far. 

Today he’s in a crisply tailored charcoal suit with a checked shirt and a brightly-patterned tie that somehow don’t clash. Jyn knows nothing about fashion, other than watching the occasional episode of Project Runway, but she blesses whoever decided that men’s dress pants should be cut so snug right now. They certainly highlight his best side.

“Weh neighbohs,” she says and slaps a panicked hand in front of her mouth when she feels drool start to trickle down her rubbery chin. Until the Novocaine is out of her system, she’s stuck sounding like Goofy when she talks. 

“Oh, right!” He sounds sincerely delighted, and smiles even wider at her. Jyn can’t help noticing that he has great teeth too. How fucking unfair is that? Meanwhile, she’s just spent two excruciating hours getting her stubborn wisdom teeth pried out of her jaw, five years later than she should have. At least she has the dental insurance to cover it now.

“It’s a nice building, isn’t it? I’ve been really happy with the place so far. Have you lived there long?”

 _How is he so warm and friendly? How?_ Jyn nods gingerly, and points at her mouth for an excuse not to answer the rest of his questions. “Sowwy, ‘entist.”

“That’s nasty.” His smile shades into something more sympathetic. “Hope you feel better soon.”

Damn, he’s gorgeous—and not an asshole. Jyn’s pretty sure her mouth is still hanging open, but she’s going to blame the Novocaine.

He gets off on the next floor with a cheerful “See you around,” and Jyn gives him a shy wave. She’s cautiously impressed with herself. Even Leia the country club princess couldn’t fault her social skills in this situation. Sure, she didn’t actually _speak_ to the GQ model she’s been admiring from afar, but that was due to circumstances beyond her control. 

And then she sees her reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator. Her face is so lopsidedly swollen that she looks like a chipmunk with the mumps, and there’s a long dark streak of drool on her t-shirt.

Fuck. She looks like she just escaped from a leper colony. Jyn lets her head fall back until it thunks against the elevator wall—which jolts her sore jaw and brings tears to her eyes. She curses again, this time in pain. She just wants to go home, fall asleep on a bag of frozen peas, and pray she never sees her beautiful neighbour again. 

 

2.  
The next time she sees him, she’s dragging her ass home on the Friday before a long weekend. Her classroom is always extra antsy on those days, and Jyn got doused with paint when she stepped in to mediate Nora and Bethany’s argument over who got to use the artist’s easel next. 

And she’s lugging the class snake in its cage because no one volunteered to take it home this weekend. Jyn had (very) briefly considered giving it a hearty rodent meal and leaving it at the school, but the thought of her kids’ faces on Tuesday morning if Nagini didn’t survive defeated her. So she’d struggled home with it on the crowded bus. At least it got her a seat; no one wanted to make the disheveled, cranky woman carrying a snake stand up. 

She has to put down the heavy cage to unlock the outer door, and then again to check her mail, which disturbs Nagini. The snake coils dryly against the side of the cage, tongue flickering in agitation, and Jyn sighs. “Me too, sister.”

She sorts through her mail—bill, bill, letter from her teacher’s college begging for donations (she laughs bitterly, wishing she could afford to give them money), a flyer for art supplies, another bill—when she hears the door open.

It’s her handsome neighbour, or The Most Beautiful Man in the World, as Jyn’s taken to calling him in her head. He’s home early today, and, shockingly, not wearing a tie; it must have been casual day at his office since he’s just in a white t-shirt under a blazer. 

Jyn, on the other hand, is wearing a purple shirt—she never wears white any more, she learned that in her first week as a student teacher—splattered with bright orange and acid green paint. She looks like a bad abstract painting. She also has sweat darkening her armpits and the small of her back under her heavy backpack (full of math worksheets to be marked this weekend) and sticking her bangs to her shiny forehead.

Her beautiful neighbour smiles and says hello. Jyn nods at him curtly. She can’t make small talk when she’s about to dissolve into a pool of sweat on the floor. Maybe Nagini picks up her tension, because she chooses that moment to raise her head and hiss. 

“Whoa!” The Most Beautiful Man in the World jumps back, dropping his mail on the floor. “Sorry, I’m just a little nervous around snakes.”

“This one’s perfectly harmless. Unless you’re a mouse.” Jyn can’t help a small smile; his anxiety is a little endearing. Lots of people are scared of snakes, but not many grown men will admit to it.

Finished with sorting her mail, she bends over to pick up Nagini’s cage and make the long climb up the stairs. Something jabs her right beneath her left breast. “Ow!” Her hand flies to her chest and she curls inward over the pain.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Jyn snarls, because there’s no way she’s about to tell this impeccably put-together man that her cheap underwire bra just snapped in two. But she can’t stay hunched over forever, so she straightens up cautiously and hopes that nothing is sticking out of her shirt. 

The sharp point of the broken wire shifts and pokes her again as she stands. She hisses in pain, pressing her free arm to her ribs and trying not to jostle Nagini in her cage.

He’s still looking at her with concern. “Are you sure? Any pain in your left arm?”

“It’s not a heart attack.” Jyn knows she sounds rude, but she doesn’t care. She just wants to get away from him before her bra tries to stab her a third time. 

He swallows, watching Nagini circle in unending loops a little anxiously. “Can I carry—it upstairs for you?”

Again with the niceness. It’s making Jyn wish she could somehow encounter this man when she doesn’t look like a walking trash heap. “No. Thanks,” she adds grudgingly, in a half-hearted attempt to be less surly. She stomps away, squeezing her elbows against her sides to try and stabilize the broken wire and avoid suffering another painful wardrobe malfunction. She's sure he's watching her go and wondering what her problem is, but at least he doesn't try to help her again.

 

3.  
Shara leans across the table and whispers, “Don’t look now, but that guy at the bar is totally checking you out.”

Jyn immediately turns to stare, because that’s what you do when someone tells you not to look, right? And maybe it’s someone she’d be into picking up… but no, of course not.

“No, he’s not,” she groans, dropping her head into her hands. “That’s my hot neighbour, the one who moved in a couple months ago. I keep bumping into him everywhere—he’s probably wondering if he needs to take out a restraining order.”

“You ought to remember him very well, Shara,” Leia adds primly. “We were over at Jyn’s the day he moved in, and I had to drag you away from the window because you were wolf-whistling at his friend.”

“I did not,” Shara protests. “You’re making that up.”

“To be fair, it was after your fourth vodka cooler.” As a defense attorney aiming to sit on the bench before she turns forty, Leia’s always scrupulously fair. 

“How you can drink that shit I’ll never understand.” Jyn pokes at the label of Shara’s Smirnoff Ice with a disdainful finger. It’s bright blue, for crying out loud. Drinks for grownups should not be blue.

“It tastes like Koolaid and it gets me buzzed.” Shara shrugs.

“Philistine.” Leia sniffs and sips her glass of rosé. 

“Wait a minute, now I remember.” Shara's eyes take on a faraway look as she ponders for a moment. “There were three of them, right? Sweaty and lifting heavy furniture. His friend was hot and built. This one’s a little skinny for my taste, I like ‘em with some meat on their bones, but you should go for him, Jyn. You like skinny guys.” 

Jyn feels obscurely defensive of her neighbour. “He might be a little lean, but the man can wear a suit. It’s like a goddamn fashion show whenever he walks through the lobby.”

She looks over again and catches a full view of the Most Beautiful Man in the World’s back. He’s taken off his suit jacket and is rolling up the sleeves of his shirt in preparation for a game of pool, apparently; his tall friend is chalking a cue with short, precise twists. He looks like he belongs in a commercial, one of those ridiculous ads for expensive watches where people with perfectly tousled hair drink martinis and wear tuxedos. If she ever saw the Most Beautiful Man in the World in a tux, she'd probably spontaneously combust.

“Jynnie’s got a crush,” Shara sings in a teasing voice.

“Fuck you, Bey, I do not,” Jyn snaps. 

Leia steps in, the peacemaker as always. “So what else can you tell us about your tall, dark, and handsome neighbour?”

She shrugs. “What’s to tell? He works long hours downtown and somehow I still keep running into him.”

“Why’s that a problem?” Shara asks.

“So far I’ve seen him at the dentist's, in the lobby a couple times, on the bus, and at the corner store. And every time I looked like I’d just crawled out of a fucking trash compactor.” Jyn shudders at the humiliating memories. “He always looks perfect. It’s a bit depressing, honestly.” 

Teaching fifth grade is not the kind of job that lends itself to an immaculate appearance. Jyn’s learned to keep an emergency outfit at school, but there are still plenty of days she’s had to come home wearing a shirt imperfectly scrubbed clean of bodily fluids. And she never bothers wearing makeup to work anymore because it’s just going to run and smear. Even so, there seems to be a law that the days she crosses paths with The Most Beautiful Man in the World are the days on which she looks as unattractive as humanly possible.

“He’s still looking over here,” Shara reports. 

“Don’t start, Shara.” Jyn picks up the appetizer menu to hide behind. “If you do you’ll regret it.”

“Fine, I’ll leave you alone to nurse your obvious crush.”

Jyn glances over her menu, trying to be subtle. Yeah, he’s bent over the pool table lining up a shot now and she’d better stop staring or her tongue’s going to unroll to the floor like a cartoon character’s. She turns her shoulders a little farther into the booth, away from that side of the bar.

“What do you think, Jyn?”

Cheekbones like that ought to be illegal, is what she thinks.

“Hey!” Leia flicks her finger, snapping it against the menu Jyn’s holding in front of her face. “Quit mooning over your neighbour and tell us what you want to eat.”

“Just order some wings, you know there’s nothing else worth eating here.” She closes her menu and throws it on the table.

Leia’s staring at her quizzically. “Why don’t you just say hello and ask him out? Or whether he wants to come in for a cup of tea-slash-sex? You’re not usually this shy.”

No, she isn’t. Normally, when Jyn finds someone this attractive she’d already be banging them like a screen door in a hurricane (assuming they were interested). 

But it’s not just that he’s gorgeous. He seems genuinely nice—like, Disney prince levels of niceness. She caught him up early one morning last week, shovelling the steps after the super had slipped on the ice and twisted his ankle. And he’s polite to everyone in the building, even Mrs O’Brien who’s a not-so-closeted racist, and the sorority girls on the main floor who smoke so much weed that just walking by their door gives Jyn a contact headache. She thinks of him like the sports players she had crushes on as a kid: he’s better as an unattainable fantasy... which is all a long-winded way of saying she’s pretty sure someone like that wouldn’t be interested in her anyway.

Leia wouldn’t let Jyn get away with something that defeatist, though, so she falls back on a more plausible excuse. “A work of art like that is meant to be admired from a distance. He’s just too beautiful to touch and risk breaking. Hitting that would be like, I don’t know, hanging the Mona Lisa in your bathroom.”

Leia is still staring at her skeptically, so Jyn keeps going. “Besides, I told you, every time I see him I look like shit. He must think I’m part bridge troll crossed with raccoon.” 

“You’re perfectly presentable right now,” Shara points out. 

“Just a little glitter glue, on your cheek—” Leia gestures, and Jyn swipes at her face with a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table. 

“Damn paper snowflakes.” She curses winter crafts.

“There, now you’re fine,” Shara says. “Go over and challenge him to a game of pool, tell him the winner gets head. Either way you come out on top.” She wiggles her eyebrows salaciously.

“You’re about as subtle as a rocket launcher, Shara.” Leia rolls her eyes. 

Jyn makes the mistake of looking over at the Most Beautiful Man again. He’s lining up another shot and the sight of his ass in those pants is absolutely lethal. She swallows hard. Maybe she should listen to her extroverted friends for once. She knows that he’s nice, after all; even if he’s not interested he’ll probably just turn her down politely. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it.”

“Way to go, Jynnie.” Shara raises the bottle and toasts to her success.

Jyn squares her shoulders, tosses her bangs out of her eyes, and tugs the neckline of her green blouse down just a touch; not that she has much cleavage to show off, but every little bit helps, right? Leia gives her a thumbs up.

She slides out of the booth, considering what to say to him as an opening line—and collides with the server bringing their platter of wings to the table. The heavy plate smacks Jyn in the shoulder and then slides down her front, sticky and painfully hot. A disgusting blend of barbeque sauce and ranch dressing trickles inside her shirt. 

Perfect. Fucking _perfect_. Jyn clenches her fists and does not scream at the poor girl who’s babbling apologies and dabbing at her tits with a bar towel, only making it worse and smearing the sauce around. She takes a deep breath and tries to speak calmly. “Please stop. I’m fine. Really.”

She can’t help glancing over at the MBMITW and his friend. Sure enough, they’re staring in this direction. It’d be hard not to notice the mess, what with the crash of breaking china and the server’s loud lamentations. 

Jyn grits her teeth and throws money down on the table for her drinks, telling the server not to bother replacing the order of wings. Shara and Leia are offering her sympathy, soda water, and baby wipes pulled from Leia’s terrifyingly organized tote bag. Jyn doesn’t want any of it.

“Forget it,” she spits. “I’m going home to take a shower and get drunk in peace, without hot sauce all over me.”

“Oh, honey,” Shara clucks in sympathy. She downs the rest of her blue cooler in one gulp—Shara may prefer disgustingly sweet alcohol, but she’s no lightweight. ”Hang on, we’ll come with you.”

“I’ll get an Uber and we can stop at the liquor store on the way,” Leia adds, already tapping their itinerary into her phone.

Jyn smiles tremulously at the two women. She hasn’t had enough to drink yet to justify the maudlin weepiness in her chest or the tears making her blink. She loves Leia and Shara. They’re good friends, even when they drive her nuts; better than her hot mess, prickly, socially awkward self deserves, really. 

Her wonderful friends sweep her out of the bar, debating the merits of vodka versus tequila for the quickest route to shitfaced. Jyn looks back over her shoulder one last time before the door closes and sees her neighbour still staring at her, his mouth open in shock as though he literally can’t believe anyone so clumsily inept is allowed out in public.

She cringes, ducks her head, and follows the click of Leia’s heeled boots up the block. It’s a sign from the universe; she’s just not meant to meet anyone that super-humanly stunning. The Most Beautiful Man in the World is destined to remain just a faraway fantasy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a prequel to [A Beautiful Day for a Neighbour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12337017) which you might also enjoy. Several other writers picked up the premise and ran with it; their amazing contributions are linked to from that story.
> 
> The concept of Jyn as an elementary school teacher (and the class snake) came from **youareiron_andyouarestrong** , and a helpful Tumblr anon gave me the idea of a bra-related wardrobe mishap.
> 
> (And here's [last year's birthday fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10510413), if you're interested.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two short Tumblr fills I'm posting here for the sake of completeness.

Jyn opens her apartment door to find an angel and a devil standing in the hallway and groans.

She’s never really seen the point in Hallowe’en for adults. In fact, it’s probably her least favourite holiday of the entire year. Her entire classroom is wired at least two weeks in advance, unmanageable on the day itself, and in a dazed sugar coma on November 1.

But this year Hallowe’en falls on a Saturday, and Han’s throwing a party for which the invitation specified “no costume, no beer.” So she bought a cheap pair of cat ears, figuring she’d draw whiskers on her face and call it a night. 

She’d reckoned without her friends’ love of dressing up, though. Both Leia the angel in white robes and impressively feathered wings and Shara the devil, with horns and a saucy tail, pronounce her cat idea “weak” and insist they can improvise something better.

Twenty minutes later, the entire contents of Jyn’s closet are heaped on her bed. She’s wearing a long black velvet skirt she forgot she had (purchased during her brief Goth phase) and a black top she never wears because it’s too snug and cut five inches lower than her comfort level. Shara has parted her hair in the middle and straightened it; Leia has smudged so much dark shadow around her eyes she can barely blink and is carefully lining her lips with blood-red pencil.

“No-one’s going to know who I am,” Jyn grumbles. “Morticia only works if you have a Gomez.”

Shara refuses to listen to her protests. “You have the right murderous attitude for Morticia. Just go with it.”

“Stop talking, you’re going to ruin my makeup job,” Leia orders.

Once Jyn has been transformed to their satisfaction, they head to the lobby to catch their Uber. And of course, that’s the moment her handsome neighbour arrives.

Shara points her plastic trident down the stairs and whispers loud enough to wake the dead. “Look, it’s the Most Beautiful Man in the World!”

Jyn’s going to expire right here out of sheer embarrassment, just keel over and roll down the stairs to his feet. Her face must be the colour of a tomato; she hopes it’s not visible under all the makeup. “If you _ever_ say that again where he can hear you, I will hex you into the ground,” she hisses at Shara.

He looks good (as always) in jeans and a red sweater that makes Jyn want to stroke her hand down his arm. And he holds the outer door for the three of them courteously, his smile showing off that goddamned dimple which haunts her daydreams. 

“Thank you,” Leia says, gracious as a queen.

“Trick or treat!” Shara grins at him. “Where’s your costume?”

“Not my thing,” he answers, “but yours are all…” his eyes catch on Jyn as she passes and he coughs, “very nice.”

* * *

“Calm your tits, I’m coming!” Jyn shouts at the knock on her apartment door. Leia is relentless when it comes to brunch—she hates having to wait in line, so she’s always nagging Jyn to leave at the asscrack of dawn. But this morning Jyn forgot to set her alarm, so Ms. Impatience will just have to cool her jets.

She flings the door open and is suddenly staring not at Leia, but at her neighbour’s chest. In a very well-fitting, heather grey sweater. For an idiotic moment she wonders why he’s not wearing a suit— _it’s Saturday morning, dummy, why would he_.

“Uh.” One word at a time is all that Jyn’s overloaded brain can manage to process and say. “Sorry.”

“No, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.” He runs a hand through his attractively tousled hair and somehow makes it look even better. “I just came by to see if you could spare an egg… I’m in the middle of making crepes and I ran out—”

Jyn has to be in the Bad Place. The Most Beautiful Man in the World is standing at her door asking for an egg, undoubtedly so he can make breakfast for whatever supermodel spent the night at his place. (He cooks, too. Un-fucking-fair.) And here she is in a faded, stretched-out t-shirt with no bra and her hair a rat’s nest. The only reason she hasn’t slammed the door in his face yet is that she pulled on a pair of leggings when she got out of bed, so at least her bare arse isn’t hanging out.

“Sure, yeah,” her mouth answers on autopilot. “Let me just grab one.”

She leaves the door open but doesn’t invite him in. Yes, it’s rude, she can hear her father’s voice chiding her but she simply can’t have TMBMITW in her personal space. On her doorstep is bad enough. Crossing her fingers, she checks the best-before date on her lone carton of eggs; fortunately, it’s the end of next week so she won’t poison him and his guest.

She hands him two eggs (“just in case”) and he smiles warmly. “Thanks, you’re a life saver.” Instead of leaving as soon as he got what he came for, he hesitates, biting his lip for a second in an extremely distracting fashion. “Would you like—”

But at that moment Leia’s voice (always stunningly loud for such a tiny person) blares up the staircase. “Jyn, if you don’t get your ass in gear right now we’ll never get a table!”

“Oh, you’re on your way out.” He sounds almost disappointed. Maybe he was about to ask for sugar or flour or something else.

“As soon as I get changed out of my pyjamas.” She waves at her elegant ensemble self-deprecatingly. Dignity, always dignity.

“I like the shirt.”

She looks down at her chest and realizes it’s the NO FRONTERAS one she picked up at the Las Cafeteras concert two years ago. “Heh. Yeah.” She grins back at him and feels slightly less embarrassed.

“Jyn!” Leia shouts again, this time from the top of the stairs.

The Most Beautiful Man in the World turns to go. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he says, nodding at Leia as they pass in the hall. Her friend’s eyebrows start leaping up and down in what Jyn recognizes as Morse code for “ _what is going on here? I am about to interrogate you ruthlessly_.”

“…uh, you too,” Jyn echoes stupidly, and wishes once again that her higher brain functions didn’t collapse at the sight of his ass in jeans.


End file.
